After winning the UEFA Champions League last season, the Premier League outfit will travel to Japan in mid-December to face the victors from the world's other club confederations.

Chelsea face a potential extra two games as a consequence which will take their fixtures for the month to nine, of which only a couple are at Stamford Bridge.

With games including Nordsjaelland in the Champions League and Leeds United in the Capital One Cup, a long journey to Asia is perhaps the last thing Di Matteo and his squad need.

But the Italian said of the Club World Cup in an interview shown on Sky Sports: "It will certainly put a big strain on the team, because it is a trip to the other side of the world with different time zones while the Premier League is still playing on.

"We will have to deal with that. But we have got a big enough squad that I think we should be able to cope with it."

Goalkeeper Petr Cech is relishing the chance to compete in the Club World Cup and does not see it as a negative requirement.

He said: "I am glad I will have the opportunity to go there. Obviously it will make our fixtures here a bit more complicated.

"But that is the way it is. I would rather have a chance to go and play and have a better week."

Most Commented

Readers' Comments

I

t's wrong to be making a joke out of Bender's name at the expense of gay people. It's the kind of childish, uncivilised thing that Football365 would deride and ridicule if it was another media outlet saying. Why is there a need for jokes like this? Does it make your writers feel like men? F365 might suggest that I 'lighten up', but it is genuinely traumatic for people who have been oppressed all their lives to be the butt of jokes, and to be told...

ou can't blame De Gea for wanting to leave, he has enough to do in front of goal as it is as well as taking on the role of Man Utd's version of Derek Acorah in trying to contact and organise a defence that isn't there.